Dr. Kamran Khan, founder of BioDiaspora and an infectious disease physician and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital, is among the experts studying the emergence of the coronavirus.
Carolyn Brown interviewed Khan for a recent CMAJ article on the viral outbreak, “New coronavirus with ‘pandemic potential’ sparks global surveillance efforts.”
Government has key role to play as early-stage technology adopter says CEO Raphael Hofstein
Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president & CEO, MaRS Innovation.
Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation, was quoted in Mary Theresa Bitti‘s National Post article, “Commercialization Conundrum: Canada must turn ideas into social and economic value,” published April 3, 2013.
The article examines Canada’s worsening track record in realizing commercialization gains based on the country’s significant per-capita investment in R&D.
Here’s an excerpt:
While Canada punches above its weight class when it comes to generating ideas — witness countless academic journals showcasing Canadian research — as a country, we are experiencing a failure to launch when it comes to commercializing those ideas and getting them to market. The Jenkins panel report on innovation spelled it out quite clearly, “Too many of the big ideas [Canada] generates wind up generating wealth for others.” Canada ranks 14th out of 17 peer countries when it comes to innovation, even though on a per-capita basis, our $7-billion federal annual investment into research and development (R&D) is far more generous than other OECD nations. The result: Our global competitiveness continues to slide. According to the World Economic Forum, Canada has dropped to 14th place in 2012 from 10th in 2010.
Every six weeks, MaRS Innovation’s marketing and communications manager writes a guest post for the MaRS Discovery District blog profiling MI’s activities or one of our start-up companies. You can read the original post on the MaRS blog.
By offering early-stage funding in tandem with hands-on management, business development, mentorship and intellectual property protection strategy, MI acts as a commercialization agent for its members and researchers.
The little keyboard for big fingers, which launched an Indiegogo campaign a week ago today to support the launch of its Android keyboard app and a wearable development kit, is currently less than $4,000 from its crowd-funded stretch goal of $60,000.
The company was featured on CTV News on Mar. 24, 2013. The CTV video story and photos of CEO Will Walmsley and CTO Xavier Snelgrove are available on CTV’s website.
Start-up launches Indiegogo campaign to change future of mobile typing
The Minuum keyboard: “the little keyboard for big fingers.” Designed by Whirlscape Inc., this one-dimensional, tiny keyboard frees up mobile screen space while allowing fast, accurate typing.
TORONTO, March 18, 2013 — Whirlscape Inc., a Canadian tech start-up, has developed Minuum, “the little keyboard for big fingers.”
Minuum is a tiny, one-dimensional keyboard that frees up mobile screen space while allowing fast, accurate typing. Its specialized, patent-protected auto-correction algorithm corrects highly imprecise typing.
This algorithm, based on the touchscreen and wearable device research of company founders, Will Walmsley (researcher) and Khai Truong (associate professor) at the University of Toronto, configures the difference between what you type and what you mean, in real time, getting it right even if you miss every single letter.
The article, “Crowdmark Lends a Helping Hand with Handwritten Assessments: How one savvy professor is scaling human grading capabilities for handwritten responses” appeared Mar. 17, 2013.
Here’s an excerpt:
Dr. James Colliander, co-founder and CEO of Crowdmark. Photo courtesy of Denise Grant. Used with permission.
James Colliander, a Professor Mathematics at the University of Toronto, knew this pain all too well. As a grader for the 2011 Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge, he and a team of volunteers had to deal with 70,000 pages of hand-written responses, a “tremendously inefficient, logistical nightmare” that involved paper shuffling and moving boxes of exams.
That’s when he started working on a way to scale human assessment capabilities. In April 2011, Colliander joined UTEST (University of Toronto Early Stage Technology), an incubator launched by the University of Toronto and MaRS Innovation, to work on his solution, Crowdmark.
“More than 240 million surgeries are performed worldwide each year, yet there is no approved product on the market to prevent the dermal scarring that can frequently occur,” writes Jennifer Boggs, managing editor of BioWorld Today in her cover story on ScarX Therapeutics.
“ScarX Therapeutics, a 2012 Toronto-based start-up, is looking to introduce a topical anti-scarring product onto the market — a product that can be administered by the patient — to prevent scarring following surgical procedures.
This regular feature addresses some of the challenges that start-ups face by asking three experts to respond to a different question each month — anything from marketing and financing guidance to advice on partnerships and mentors.
Here’s Hofstein’s response:
The first question to define is “partnership with whom?”
You will face very different issues when, for example, partnering with another founder to create a company together than you do when negotiating a relationship between a startup and a more established company.
OtoSim Night revolutionizes how students learn to identify ear pathologies
On Feb. 13, 2013, almost 100 second-year University of Toronto (U of T) medical students participated in an optional, intensive, one-hour otoscopy workshop using the OtoSim™ — a training and simulation system that is radically changing the way students in Canada and around the world learn this poorly-acquired medical skill.
And, if you want to use simulation technology to change the way medical professionals are taught, ear disease is a good place to start.
“Historically, otoscopy simulation involved looking at an image of an eardrum on a piece of film at the end of a rubber ear,” said Dr. Andrew Sinclair, CEO of OtoSim Inc. “OtoSim™ has a digital image bank that is orders of magnitude more extensive. The instructor can electronically point to areas within the image and confirm that the student sees the pathology of interest. Diagnostic accuracy goes up enormously.”
Rahnama is founder and CEO of Flybits Inc., Research and Innovation director at Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone, co-founder of Ryerson’s Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing Lab.
Rahnama is currently in Barcelona to launch Flybits LITE at Mobile World Congress 2013.
Dr. Kamran Khan, founder of BioDiaspora and an infectious disease physician and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital, is among the experts studying the emergence of the coronavirus.
Earlier this year, the Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada awarded MI $14.95 million to continue its mandate as a Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR), matched by $25 million from membership fees and private sector investments.
Exam pain is not limited to students, notes Tony Wan of EdSurge in his profile of UTEST start-up company, Crowdmark.
“More than 240 million surgeries are performed worldwide each year, yet there is no approved product on the market to prevent the dermal scarring that can frequently occur,” writes Jennifer Boggs, managing editor of BioWorld Today in her cover story on ScarX Therapeutics.
